Printer collecting [Was: Laserjet fuser rollers - cleaning]

It seems the main thing that impedes collecting printers is the same thing that impedes people from collecting terminals: size and weight. Printers tend to be even larger and heavier than terminals. Plus they have associated consumables that may not be obtainable anymore. For instance, Tektronix printers for storage tube terminals use a funky silver-halide dry print process and the paper is now unobtainium and has a short shelf life, even in ideal storage conditions. Printing terminals tend to sit on ebay for a long time, unless they are the portable thermal printing variety. When thermal fax machines finally become obsolete, it will become very difficult to obtain paper for those terminals as well. Right now you can use the fax machine thermal paper rolls for those printing terminals, but there will come a time when they're not making that paper even for fax machines. Even printing terminals like the LA36, for which many DEC collectors have a soft spot, don't sell very well on ebay. It could be because the sellers ask too much money, but I suspect mostly it's due to the fact that freight shipping is going to be required. Teletypes have a soft spot in enough people's hearts that they are willing to pay the expense of having them shipped. Flexowriters, which I consider to be a kind of teletype on steroids, not so much, apparently. Maybe there are some printer collectors out there, but I haven't met any. You could easily create a 'printers wiki' that would be as expansive as the terminals wiki, based just on printers produced for the PC market alone. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>